


the damp grass yields to me

by ashleykay



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Gilbert Never went to Alberta, Inspired by a Hozier Song, Mental Health Issues, gilberts whole family is dead trauma, nature inspired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:01:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23747998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashleykay/pseuds/ashleykay
Summary: Orphan girls, with their dirty faces and soap cracked hands never wake up to glass slippers or shining gowns. Mice did not become horses. And handsome men did not marry girls with headstones for parents.
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 20
Kudos: 138





	the damp grass yields to me

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly I am not sure about this. Only I was writing something about a Pirate Anne and then I found a sentence in my phone's notes about Anne not believing in fairy tales and then another not completed fic about the peddler granting Anne a wish and this sort of was born from that. So I am not sure if I like it but I have worked on it and it's the only thing I've completed in like six months so I share.
> 
> Not beta'd. 
> 
> In A Week by Hozier inspired. It's where the titles come from. And also I listened to like a thousand hours of hozier on repeat while writing this so....

the damp grass yields to me

  
  


  1. _a thousand teeth_




Anne Shirley did not believe in fairy tales.

Orphan girls, with their dirty faces and soap cracked hands never wake up to glass slippers or shining gowns. Mice did not become horses. And handsome men did not marry girls with headstones for parents.

When she was much younger she had read Grimm's. Pressed herself into the smudged windows to read by moonlight. She had dreamed in the beginning. Of birds that would peck the mean spirited eyes of the matron. Lovely fairies that would grant her wishes and take her to castles and let her spin in a candle lit ballroom. She had dreamed of finding love, of being loved, of being enough.

Instead there were the other girls. Pushy and cruel. Little sneering faces. Cracked palms from working to hard and from to young an age. And they were the same as her. Ugly, unwanted. With drunkard fathers or ruined mothers. Dead parents and shallow paupers graves. There was not a shortage of cinder girls or lonely children. But no fairy godmothers came. There was never a prince, just beady eyed men coming for the girls that were to old to be considered babies and to young to be women. Those men gave promises of factory work, that somehow only brought about a new generation of girls and boys through the asylum doors.

Anne at 13 preferred Jane Eyre and the sad Russian novels she hid under the loose boards in the cold tower of the asylum. Books like those didn't lie. Not really. Maybe love came, but only through suffering and sadness. No one saved those women. No one would save Anne either.

She knew that now more than anything. Marilla would send her away in the morning. She would go back to the asylum, and then another service. Or maybe worse. Maybe, she closed her eyes, there would be Mr. Hayes. He would come and she would go to his wire factory, then in a few months, perhaps a year, she would go back, with a long dress and a big round belly.

All the girls came back like that.

There was no such thing as true love's kiss.

No happily ever after.

Just musty breathed men, and hollowed eyed children.

For a moment, sitting at the station, she had hoped. Somehow this place would be different. The White Way of Delight. That lovely, beautiful lake. Matthew's quiet acceptence. She always talked to much. Found so much to fear in the silences. But Matthew had let her talk, had been shy but so kind.

She had thought, here, here with the green roof and the soft cherry tree, she had found a place to grow roots.

Hope was a frightening thing, just enough and she would be able to make it another day. Too much and, Anne peered out the gable window, well too much and it you could drown in the disappointment.

The moon was high and clear through the little cherry tree.

Maybe it would be okay. Maybe she wouldn't get on the ferry back to Nova Scotia.

Anne didn’t believe in fairy tales, but myths, haunted stories about woods and fairies. A long tale about nymphs that hid in moonlight and slept in nests in the tallest trees. She could believe that.

Maybe she could become the myth. Could forage for nuts and berries. Could marry the dirt and earth she came from.

She would not go back to the asylum. Wouldn't become another girl, blank and empty, providing another baby to squall and weep in the crib room.

Instead she would sleep under the moon and bath in creeks and rivers. She would grow her own leaves and moss for shoes and dresses. Maybe in time the flowers and vines would grow up her legs and belly and she would be the earth and ground. Mother nature would take her and she would belong at last to something more than herself.

For now. Maybe for the last time, she climbed into the bed in the white gable room, and willed herself to sleep.

  
  


  1. _i have never known hunger_




  
  


Gilbert Blythe grew up on adventure. On train rides where the world slid by in all the colors Canada could produce. He grew up with Walt Whitman whispering like a ghost in his ear. He grew up with eyes like a grave marker. His mother's eyes.

There were whispers about her. Hushed breathes that curled like a soft wind at his ear. Ears that were shaped like an older brother Gilbert had never met.

His father read to him Whitman and Yeats. Gilbert heard about the Zulu war and time spent on ships and places in the world that sounded different and unreal compared to an orchard on his own little island.

He grew up seeing a graveyard from his window.

In the fenced in ground were grandparents and two uncles.

Grown over grass covered up a sister and a brother.

Winding blue flowers curled against his mother's name.

There was an empty spot for his father.

An empty spot for him.

Gilbert grew up in the shadows of a family made of dust.

He didn't grow up with a mother.

The woman who's picture sat on his father's side table. Who's eyes glanced at him from the mirror. That lady had never sang him songs. She had never whispered stories as he tried to sleep.

Gilbert didn't grow up with fairy tales. He didn't believe in them anyway. But sometimes he heard the girls at school talk about them. But he had no need for stories about princes and dances. Gilbert knew the truth of things.

There was no such thing as a magic bean or giants that could give him gold or geese. No genies. No wishes.

He had a sick father. A family curse. A body full of blood that was dying out.

There was a cough from his father's room. It was a wet sound. Soon it would water the family plot.

Gilbert shut his eyes. Slowed his breath. He didn't wish, there was no use for it, but he imagined. Pretended. There was no orchard. No Blythe graveyard. He was free.

There were no apple trees, whose branches twisted like arms to keep him there. 

In his dreams there was an open sea. The world smelled of salt.

It was all on open road. 

His heart was light. 

There was no death.

  1. _i have never known color_




If there was a tale, it would be like this: There was a boy who's family was dying. His family had fed the island with blood and bone. In return he was the island. Even when all he wanted was to be more than that. More than dirt and trees and blooming sweet apples. 

It would also go like this: There was a girl who didn't really belong. Not to this world. Or this place. As much as she loved Avonlea, it was earth and trees and farmland that flowed into the sea. But it didn't love her back. 

If it were a story it would come to be that the boy who wanted freedom and the girl who wanted roots would find each other and they would kiss and then... 

they would live happily ever after.

But this isn't that. This is what is real. 

There is a boy who's family is dying. He is the last of a long line. But he is young. And he is afraid. And all he has ever know is an island. The graveyard that is lined with stones of people who shared his blood but who he's never really met. 

What he wants is more than freedom. It's the island and the trees and the sea that goes on and out and past all that he's ever seen. 

Gilbert wants to be naive. To sleep deeply and without a thought as to what tomorrow brings. He would love to wake up and eat a breakfast that had been sat out for him or make Ruby blush. To play games with the other boys at lunch. 

But he struggles to fall asleep because what if his father dies when he isn't there. When he wakes it's to a quiet house, where he'll make the breakfast. And as pretty as Ruby is, he can't help but to think she is so so young and he is much to old.

On the road to the schoolhouse he'll run into a girl with eyes the color of the waves. Her hair is a vivid hot dream. 

That girl has no roots. Nothing ties her down to the island. 

He'll watch as she bows her head and stutters on a thank you. 

That girl belongs to no one. Or she belongs to herself. In a story she would be a princess. She'd outsmart a trickster and say his name and keep the baby and the gold and the love for herself.

But she is just a girl. She can't spin hay into gold. When she sleeps it's fitfully and short. And there is never a kiss to wake her up. She does that on her own.

She trips on her way to school on the first day. Slams down on her knees and wounds her palms. Her books scatter. 

A boy helps her up. Squats to pick up her books and her milk.

She doesn't cry even though it's spilled on the forest floor. His eyes are wide and when he looks at her she can see the weeds that grow around his heart. 

“Thank you.” But her eyes don't look up at him. 

The boy hands her a name. 

She gives one back. 

“With an e. Please.”

He doesn't ask why it matters. Because the littlest things matter. An e changes something from one to many. 

She tells him she is new. And she means she might have just been born. Just at the Bright River Station. Her passage may have been in the White Way of Delight. 

And he might understand with the way he nods and slows his walk to match her own.

He tells her that it's his first day back in months. 

“It was a family issue.”

She doesn't ask for more. Instead she gives him a look side long and soft. Maybe, he thinks, she can see the graveyard in his face.

She licks her lips and turns her eyes ahead. She tells him of the Cuthbert siblings and how nervous she is as this is her first time going to a real school.

But inside the school house it all goes wrong.

Anne was always stumbling over rules. Trying to find the right way to be with no direction. 

“You can't even look at him.”

Ruby's eyes looked beautiful watery. And Josie's look was startling in it's intensity. 

But she thought, why shouldn't she look, why should she choose these girls who would always be her better when Gilbert had been kind. 

How, she wondered, could a person be claimed. 

She sat on the edge of woods, her dress growing dirty and her lunch unshared. Looking up at the white little building, she knew it was another place she didn't really belong to. Not with a teacher like that and girls that she didn't understand. 

From the side his hand appeared before her. 

There was small red apple. 

“I'm not suppose to talk to you.”

His eyebrows questioned her.

How did she tell him about the other girls. About being an outcast already. She wasn't sure but she thought telling about Ruby's dibs would be a betrayal somehow. Even though there were no promises between her and them.

She shrugged and told him that the other girls told her she wasn't to speak or look at him. But she kept the reason why to herself. 

He didn't say that he thought it was ridiculous, but his face spoke anyway. He sat beside her, pulled his lunch out and split his milk.

She felt something grow beneath her feet. 

It felt like vines curling themselves around her pulling her to the ground.

Maybe, she thought as she bit into the sweetest apple she'd ever had, she was growing roots after all.

  1. _this morning revels to me_




The old king always dies. Or he is dying. The land morns or it crumbles till he is healed or the new Prince proves his worth.

Gilbert wasn't a prince. But the orchard is still rotting. His father wasn't going to heal so there is still grief. 

He tells Anne about it after the first snowfall. It's the first time he has said anything about it out loud. It didn't make the weight on his chest lift. 

At first she is quiet. Then slowly she slips her hand in his. But she says nothing. 

There isn't anything to say anyway.

In a story there would be the right words. Something to soothe the burn. The girl would know to pull the hero to her. Or the hero wouldn't need to be comforted at all. He would be strong and brave and he would never waiver.

Gilbert wasn't a prince. He wasn't a hero either.

He was still just a boy.

There was never going to be words that could set anything right.

Later, when the doctor leaves, and she comes to his door with school work and a red nose, she'll say exactly the wrong thing.

Then, later still, he'll pull himself into chair in his father's room, listen to him wheeze and gasp, and he'll cry. 

Silently. 

Painfully.

She isn't graceful. She stutters and sometimes she is cruel.

Not intentionally. He doesn't think she could be that on purpose. But it hurts the same.

His father is going to die. And what he wanted, what he really needed was the right thing.

But here he is. 

When she comes again, she is sorry. She looks at him, her eyes round and blue. She tells him she doesn't know how he grieves. That the things she missed. Mourned. Those things are imaginary. Could  have beens. She tells him that his path in grief is lonely and she can't tell him what will be. But then, she leans up and pulls him into a hug. 

“You don't have to go alone.”

It's not exactly the right thing. But her arms are warm and she is soft around him.

It's almost enough.

When his father dies it is silent.

The house and the snow. Anne's footsteps beside him are quiet too. She is holding his hand and she doesn't let go.

That's almost enough too.

In the aftermath, beyond the funeral and the empty closed house, people come. They bring food and condolences. 

The school girls in bright colorful caps and coats and they bring food they made themselves. They had somehow forgiven Anne for her friendship with him. But she wasn't with them. 

It was a Shepard's Pie. He wasn't fond of lamb but smiled anyway. 

Ruby's eyes stayed flashing at him. Her skin pinkened and glowing. But all of them were to bright. They didn't seem real.

Not as real as the freshly dug grave.

When Anne comes she brings stew. She sighs at the dish from the others. He tells her it was nice of them but he doesn't like lamb. He tells her a story of the only lamb his father kept, how Gilbert named him.And after it was slaughtered he had cried. Sobbing and refusing to eat anything.

His father had vowed to never keep another animal. 

Just the bees from then on out.

She laughs with her eyes at all the right parts. He is still lonely. But as they eat the stew he doesn't feel alone. 

But soon it isn't enough. The loneliness is too much.

He leaves for the docks and then the steamer.

He carries Anne with him. Her eyes. The ocean. The coal burning. Her hair.

If this were the right kind of story, she would have been enough to make him stay.

But Gilbert doesn't believe in fairy tales.

Neither does Anne.

And when he comes back, it is with a brother and a partner. The house transforms almost like how a mouse becomes a horse. It turned itself into a home.

When he comes back, Anne is there, her face is the first one he sees. She comes with bread and meat and a big smile. 

She says hello and welcome and hugs them both. He is proud then to know her. Her kindness. Her acceptance. 

She makes them promise to come over for Christmas. 

It is exactly the right thing to say.

  1. _i'd be home with you_




If this were a book, there would be an end. 

There isn't one.

Sometimes she still wonders lying in her gable room. The Snow Queen her friend reaching her arms to Anne's favorite window. 

How it all could have gone. If she Marilla had chose differently. She thinks about the roots she planted herself, the vines of love that creep up her legs and torso. Avonlea is a part of her. But she can't help to question whether she is a part of it.

When the girls and her had gone to a party at White Sands, someone had remarked on how pretty Avonlea girls were, and Jane had pointed out that Anne wasn't really an Avonlea girl. 

It had stung. Felt like another way she was different and odd. Another way she didn't quite fit in. 

Gilbert had noticed how she was a little lost. A little lonely. 

“Am I Avonlea?”

Anne knew that Gilbert could only really say the truth. They stayed close dancing. But before he could answer, he had been pulled away by Moody.

But he looked back to her.

Later, when she is standing outside, the moon high and bright, he told her she was more than Avonlea. That she could never be just another girl from there. Anne, he had said, was Green Gables and Nova Scotia. She was Scotland and the sea. The ferry that brought her to the island. Was Anne, Avonlea? Yes. And more. She was the Snow Queen and the best tree in the Orchard. Anne was a part of what came before and all that would come. 

People like Ruby and Josie were fine. But they were Avonlea in the way it spoke and gossiped, they weren't the Haunted Woods, they were Mr. Phillips and propriety. Avonlea was who they were but they weren't Avonlea in the earth.

She thought then that she had always loved him but sometimes Anne was not sure about love. She had dreamed of it and desired it. But she could not understand it beyond a book or a poem. Some play that she could see with formed bumpy words. She knew words. Meanings of guttural not quite soft sounds. She could close her eyes and see love like a summer day or passion in hot unyielding red. 

But to feel it was different. She knew the sting of a belt. Lashes done with a stinging drunk word. She knew the sight of a husband and his wife with little yelping cries. And she knew tired eyes, lonely eyes, those young eyes that were touch starved. Love starved. That hungered for something more than just kindness. 

The Avonlea girls never had that look. The difference between them was never as simple as prim clothes or red hair. It was something in the marrow of her bones. 

How easy would it be for her to mistake kindness for love. When she said it. When she vowed it she wanted it to be a truth. 

In fairy tales, the princesses always knew, she was awoken with a kiss. It was marked for her. But Anne wasn't a royal.

She was just a girl, right on the cusp of something else. Gilbert didn't have to wake her. Save her. He knew who she was and what she dreamed.

Maybe it's a cliché, but she wants to create something. Something of herself. To put her hands inside and pull something out. Fully formed and whole. To mold something out of the dirt and rich earth and her whole heart. Deep and bold and real. 

She wanted a love that felt as real as what she made. He was real. The way she felt was real. 

Tomorrow they would head back to school, her to Queens and him on the long train back to Toronto. This is the part of the book where she would say the right thing. Or he would. 

The moment of truth. 

A book of revelation. 

This isn't that story. 

This is about a boy who's family died. And a girl who didn't really belong. She didn't save him and he didn't save her. She could say things that were cruel and he could snap when what he really wanted was comfort. 

It goes like this. She grows roots from her heart. And she plants them where she goes. Where she can. She belongs to a family that found her by accident. She was a mistake but she is one that stuck and one that in the end is wanted. Anne created herself from herself. She pulled from herself the ashes of her hopes and dreams and created a phoenix from what she was given. If this were that kind of story she is the prince and the princess and she woke herself up.

He is born from death and it followed him. But it isn't a curse. It is living. And his solace is in a man he found in the belly of boat. In a place he came to after running from his problems. His family is found and his and he is proud of it. Gilbert was the giant and the goose and the genie that granted all three of his wishes.

It's that kind of story.

Before the train comes. After he walks her home from a party. He'll kiss her. His first and hers too. But they are awake and real. He'll tell her he loves her and she'll laugh and nod. She'll cry after their second kiss and linger for a third.

Years later. He'll ask and she'll answer. She'll wear a heirloom on her finger. 

There will be other times, worse times. And she make herself from those ashes too. People will die and he'll morn. But he'll know where he should be. 

But it's now. It's like this. Once there was a boy and a girl. And they lived.

If it were that type of story, this would be where they lived happily ever after.

It isn't that type of story. 

Because it isn't the end. 


End file.
